ATT Mail with Cable Modem

I'm helping friends set up a wi-fi net with a cable modem. She wants to keep her worldnet.att.net email address (even though she'll have to pay for it separately), and we have been on several long holds with the Indian techs who handle their telephone support. We've added an "i" to the front of her incoming POP mail server, and changed the port, which got her mail to successfully download, but haven't been able to get her SMTP outgoing server set up right. In accord with their instructions, we added the "i" to the front of the SMTP server name and changed the port and set her up for secure login, all to no avail. She's running ME and Netscape on an Emachine with a 600 MHz processor and 64k (!?) of memory. I'll get to the memory upgrade later...right now I just need to get her able to send emails from Netscape Mail.

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

I'm going to move this thread to the Other Browsers & Email Clients forum since the problem might reach the correct Loungers in that board and it doesn't really look like a "Servers" question in the definition of this forum.

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

Having done the move that I did, now let me ask a few questions, please. What version of Netscape are we talking about? Do you have any links to ATT web sites with instructions or tutorials that you may be reading? Maybe someone here can spot something you've missed. <img src=/S/grin.gif border=0 alt=grin width=15 height=15> And lastly, how about posting a screenshot of the Netscape SMTP setup page, again to see if someone else will notice something. (I haven't looked at Netscape for quite some time.)

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

Thanks for the move. I wasn't sure where to put the post. It's Netscape 7.0. I tried in vain to find any ATT websites with instructions. I suspect that ATT avoids helping its customers do what she wants to do - continue using her ATT email with another high-speed vendor. I haven't been able to find any useful instructions beyond the stuff to set up outlook express and netscape to talk to the pop servers over a dialup connection. We got the change in servers and port numbers in a very long and difficult to understand telephone hold which also involved changing lots of the parameters for the SMTP setup to see if anything would work. I evidently reached a telephone consultant at the very bottom of the food chain, as he repeatedly had to ask me to hold while he sought someone who actually had an answer to my question. Combined with the repeats and spelling-out necessary to decipher his thick Indian accent, it was a very "rewarding" experience.
I'll go over to the friend's house later today and get the SMTP screen shot for you. They're not up yet (it's 6:20 am on a Sunday here)

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

Ahhh, I'm sure glad you came back - I had missed the part about the email NOT being from the same vendor as her ISP ! ! Now that I re-read your post, you did say or imply that. We may have to let another Lounger who's more "internet savvy" than I chime in here to confirm what I'm about to say, but I think that the SMTP server has to be via her ISP, not a third-party. If I'm correct about that, I can't see that she should care, as long as her mail can get sent. She'll have her local copy on her PC for record. And as far as incoming POP, that can be anywhere, in addition to your ISP. I have several incoming POP email accounts, but all my outgoing mail goes via my ISP's SMTP server. Can someone else comment, please?

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

If I understand where we've come to now, I should leave her POP client configured to talk to worldnet.att.net like I have it (it's receiving fine), but configure her SMTP client to look at smtp.gci.net, since they're now going to provide SMTP services. I confess that I understand neither POP nor SMTP, but I have to admire how incredibly smart I seem to be able to throw those abbreviations around like I knew what I was talking about.

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

And now, for a "secondary" question I've saved for now! On the subject of incoming mail (POP), I don't know if you realize how easy it would be to add another email "account" within Netscape for her new, broadband ISP so she doesn't have to continue paying for the ATT service just for incoming mail. Her Netscape mail would look something like my attachment, showing three of my incoming (POP) mail accounts in Mozilla (similar to Netscape). Her "old" ATT mail would still be there and all new incoming could go to the "new" account. (I've taken some graphics liberties with the attachment to keep it from being too large.)

The pain in the <img src=/w3timages/censored.gif alt=censored border=0> about it all is that changing email addresses is as much trouble as changing postal addresses! When I converted to cable early in 2004, I sent email notices to as many addressees as I could come up with. I then maintained my old email account in parallel for three months just to be sure. When I felt comfortable that the "important" people in my life were on board, I cancelled the old email address. Something to think about...

Re: ATT Mail with Cable Modem

What I've seen is that some ISPs will block SMTP traffic on their networks except for their own mail servers . It's an anti-spam measure, I guess. This may be why the OP cannot reach te SMTP server on the other ISP.

The usual solution to this situation, is to set you SMTP server to the one provided by your ISP. You'll still be able to maintain your old address, you'll just be having your ISP deliver the mail for you.